About three o'clock in the morning I heard a hammering, squashing sound, and looking from under the chintz curtain, I was first astonished and then disgusted to see a wan-looking, cadaverous personage, from whom the most frightful snoring had proceeded during the early part of the night, hammering with the heel of his shoe at some dark moving objects, which he, every moment, scraped from his bed and placing them on the floor smashed at them in a raging and furious way with his shoe heel, taking care the while to keep up a steady stream of curses from his lips. He saw me looking at him and said:

"Well, neighbor, wot d'ye think of this. I pays four-pence for my bed, and here I am a-fighting to keep off the blessed bugs, for my life. I got myself gloriously drunk last night, to sleep, so that the wipers might not wake me up, but all the gin in Lunnon couldn't make a man sleep while the wermin are in the bed-clothes. I have took out and killed a bushel, more or less, of 'em, in the last half hour, but there's plenty more of 'em, Lord bless you."

This was the keystone of the edifice of my disgust. Too much of a good thing is said to be of no practical benefit to any one, and there was such a richness of bed-bugs and body parasites to be found in "Damnable Jack's" lodging house, that I thought I would not farther trouble his hospitality, and touching the guardian of the place upon the shoulder, who started up in a frightened way as if he were attacked, I left Mr. Scragg's lodgings, and took a walk in the cool morning air as far as Westminster Bridge, where I sat until daybreak, looking at the Parliament House, and the silent river with its numerous craft.

Before I left the accursed place, the policeman pointed to a pail of foul water standing in a corner, that had been fresh over night, and which had now had a thick scum on its top produced by so many poisonous lungs.

It is needless to say that I took a good warm bath early that morning, more than satisfied with my experience of the previous night.

Of this class of lodging houses, there are, in London, I believe, about seventy-five, capable of accommodating any number of lodgers that the proprietors may see fit to stow away in their dens.

Some idea may be formed of the manner in which the poorer classes of the London artisans are herded together from the fact that in the Inner Ward of St. George's Parish the number of families apportioned to the dwellings are so largely in excess of the room which they ought to occupy that all kinds of frightful distempers are common in these hell-dens. I give a table to show how human beings are crowded in this district:

Dwellings. No. of Families. Beds. No. of Families.
Single room to each family, 929 | One bed to each family, 623
Two rooms to ditto, 408 | Two " " 638
Three " " 94 | Three " " 154
Four " " 17 | Four " " 21
Five " " 8 | Five " " 8
Six " " 4 | Six " " 3
Seven " " 1 | Seven " " 1
Eight " " 1 | Dwellings without a bed, 7
Not ascertained, 3 | Not ascertained, 10
—— ——
1,465 | 1,465